Content strategist in higher ed. Driver of #strategycar at 3pm EST every Friday.

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Alaina is the Web Content Strategist for a public university, where she helps departments across campus think strategically about their online communication, and is project manager for large-scale web projects. She is also the “driver” of #strategycar, a weekly Twitter chat designed to encourage strategic discussion and brainstorming for higher education professionals.

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Facebook Events Now Include the Option to Join, but Not Share

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Without warning and almost as if by magic, Facebook Events are different than they were this morning.

Aside from some formatting tweaks in the details section, you may have also noticed that the RSVP options available to users have changed. No longer is one prompted to accept or decline an invitation. Instead, potential guests are presented with this.

On the heels of Facebook’s Subscribe feature, this new Join button presents a confusing option. This button, by default, is shaded blue with a check mark, appearing to indicate that a user has already “joined” an event. Does this not look like something to un-check if you don’t wish to “join” the event? Turns out, though, that clicking this button tells Facebook that you’ll be attending said event.

Your Event options will now appear as follows.

To change your RSVP, you’ll need to click on that little gear icon to access the Event settings.

And where is the option to share an event? I find the update to the RSVP process slightly annoying, but nothing I can’t live with. What I simply cannot live with, however, is the inability to Share a Facebook event. I need to be able to share events on behalf of my institution, and I absolutely need users to share my events among themselves. Isn’t sharing the entire point of Facebook? I am hoping this is just a temporary glitch that will be fixed shortly. I am not alone.

Let’s all keep our collective eye on this one, and cross our fingers that the option to Share an Event is not gone for good.

UPDATE: I’ve updated this post to include the following graphic shared on Twitter by @citylifematt. This is a great road map to to Facebook’s Event updates.

It looks like if you want to edit an Event you created for Page, you have to click the little gear icon to access your settings. I just checked an event that I created individually, though, and the edit button is still there. I’m not sure why they’re set up differently.

I also need the share option for events. My page promotes an area of town and have asked that events in the area be sent to me to share. Now I cannot do this. This makes Facebook much less useful to me. It is a big problem.

I found this site while googling solution to, I might as well say, our problem: Sharing events. At first I thought It was only me, I could not believe Facebook would make such an idiotic move, but guess what..I can not believe this..what are they thinking? I run a bar in my town and I do my own marketing and promotion via my business page and I need event sharing, it is the basis of facebook marketing. I hope they fix this.

You should be able to use “@” to tag the event in your post — I think you have to have RSVP’d to the event. Who knows, though? They change things around at random. It can be tricky if you have multiple events with the same name, since it doesn’t include the date.

If you use the URL, you can also delete the URL from your text once it shows the preview of it. It’ll still be attached to your post (like when you used to be able to share a link explicitly), but it won’t be in the text.

I don’t think they understand how people use their site or give any real thought to what they do.

Glad it’s not just me. Weren’t we told not long ago that FB is all about the sharing? Hence the annoying ticker.

I need the share option as being an admin and member of various groups it spreads the word.
I also have a page and sharing is so very important with this one.
Fingers crossed it’s just another useless idea from some fb tech that will be disposed of and the share option will be returned to us.

Thanks for an interesting read. Maybe you have an answer for a related question…. How can I invite a relevant page to an event. To be a co-host to the event? It can’t be right that I have to create two events, just because I have two hosts??!?!?

Before when I joined an event it would appear on my fb page under Activities now it does not. I have not changed any settings so why is this the case? Other friends of mine that join the same event dont have that issue.

I haven’t heard of that issue before. It’s hard to know how Facebook chooses what is published as activity or not. Are your friends able to see your event activity? Is it just certain events or all of them?

I can click the share button but when I do nothing happens – the event doesn’t get shared on either my page or wall, the event window just sits there no matter how many timess I click share . . frustrating. Is anyone else having this problem, I can’t find a fix anywhere.

The popup is there and has the “share” button highlighted so it’s click-able, but nothing happens when I click it. It used to work fine a couple months ago. I have tried it on several PC’s and all do the same. I have been forced to copy and paste the link onto my page and timeline, but I’d rather it work like it used to by simply clicking share.

i try to add another host on my event, but it won’t work. the candidate of the host has already join on the event, but when i try to add her as a host, it can’t be done. It says “Hosts will be added after they join this event.”. Any suggestion?

Facebook has taken away the ability to SHARE the event. They now want you to spend money to promote it. :-/
They have also changed it to where you can only message people who are attending or maybe attending your event.

Honestly, it used to be so easy to use Facebook and they make it more complicated everyday. They are becoming money hungry and that’s too bad.
Even their “help” section is out of date!